Facebook’s lead EU regulator is asking questions about its latest security fail

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has confirmed it’s put questions to the company about a major security breach that we reported on yesterday.

“The DPC became aware of this issue through the recent media coverage and we immediately made contact with Facebook and we have asked them a series of questions. We are awaiting Facebook’s responses to those questions,” a spokeswoman for the Irish Data Protection Commission told us.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for a response.

As we reported earlier, a security research discovered an unsecured database of hundreds of millions of phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts.

The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on Facebook users from multiple countries, including 18 million records of users in the U.K.

We were able to verify a number of records in the database — including UK Facebook users’ data.

The presence of Europeans’ data in the scraped stash makes the breach a clear matter of interest to the region’s data watchdogs.

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes stiff penalties for compliance failures such as security breaches — with fines that can scale as high as 4% of a company’s annual turnover.

Ireland’s DPC is Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe under GDPR’s one-stop shop mechanism — meaning it leads on cross-border actions, though other concerned DPAs can contribute to cases and may also chip in views on any formal outcomes that result.

The UK’s data protection watchdog, the ICO, told us it is aware of the Facebook security incident.

“We are in contact with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), as they are the lead supervisory authority for Facebook Ireland Limited. The ICO will continue to liaise with the IDPC to establish the details of the incident and to determine if UK residents have been affected,” a spokeswoman said.

It’s not yet clear whether the Irish DPC will open a formal investigation into the security incident.

It does already have a large number of open investigations on its desk into Facebook and Facebook-owned businesses since GDPR’s one-stop mechanism came into force — including one into a major token security breach last year, and many, many more.

For the latest breach, it’s also not clear exactly when Facebook users phone numbers were scraped from the platform. In a response yesterday the company said the data-set is “old”, adding that it “appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers”.

If that’s correct, the phone number breach is likely to pre-date April 2018 — which was when Facebook announced it was making changes to its account search and recovery feature, after finding it had been abused by what it dubbed “malicious actors”.

“Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way,” Facebook said at the time.

It would also therefore pre-date GDPR coming into force, in May 2018, so would likely fall under earlier EU data protection laws — which carry less stringent penalties.

Read Full Article

Facebook is making its own deepfakes and offering prizes for detecting them

Image and video manipulation powered by deep learning, or so-called “deepfakes,” represent a strange and horrifying facet of a promising new field. If we’re going to crack down on these creepy creations, we’ll need to fight fire with fire; Facebook, Microsoft, and many others are banding together to help make machine learning capable of detecting deepfakes — and they want you to help.

Though the phenomenon is still new, we are nevertheless in an arms race where the methods of detection vie with the methods of creation. Ever more convincing fakes appear regularly, and though while they are frequently benign, the possibility of having your face flawlessly grafted into a compromising position is very much there — and many a celebrity has already had it done to them.

Facebook, as part of a coalition with Microsoft, the Partnership for AI, and several universities including Oxford, Berkeley, and MIT, is working to empower the side of good with better detection techniques.

“The most interesting advances in AI have happened when there’s a clear benchmark on a dataset to write papers against,” said Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer in a media call yesterday. The dataset for object recognition might be millions of images of ordinary objects, while the dataset for voice transcription would be hours of different kinds of speech. But there’s no such set for deepfakes.

We talked about this challenge at our Robotics and AI event earlier this year in what I thought was a very interesting discussion:

Fortunately Facebook is planning on dedicating around $10 million in resources to make this Deepfake Detection Challenge happen.

“Creation of these datasets can be challenging, because you want to make sure that everyone participating in it is clear and gives consent so they aren’t surprised by the usage of it,” Schroepfer continued. And since most deepfakes are made without any consent whatsoever, they’re not really permissible for usage in an academic context.

So Facebook and its partners are making the deepfake content out of whole cloth, he said. “You want a dataset of source video, and then a dataset of personalities you can map onto that. Then we’re spending engineering time implementing the latest most advanced deepfake techniques to generate altered videos as part of the dataset.”

And while you’re entirely justified in wondering, no, they aren’t using Facebook data to do this. They’ve got paid actors.

This dataset will be provided to interested parties, who will be able to build solutions and test them, putting the results on a leaderboard. At some point there will be cash prizes given out, though the details are a ways off. With luck this will spur serious competition among academics and researchers.

“We need the full involvement of the research community in an open environment to develop methods and systems that can detect and mitigate the ill-effects of manipulated multimedia,” said the University of Maryland’s Rama Chellappa in a news release. “By making available a large corpus of genuine and manipulated media, the proposed challenge will excite and enable the research community to collectively address this looming crisis.​”

Initial tests of the dataset are planned for the International Conference on Computer Vision in October, with the full launch happening at NeurIPS in December.

Read Full Article

After announcing Galaxy Fold release date, Samsung cancels older preorders

The good news: Samsung says it has addressed the early problems with the Galaxy Fold and finally has a release date (in Korea at least). The bad news: the company is canceling the first round of U.S. preorders. The gooder news: if you were among those early adopters, the it’s giving you a $250 in-house credit to keep you in its good graces.

Shortly after announcing that its first foldable handset is set to start shipping to customers in South Korea on September 6, Samsung sent out a note to customers stating that it would be “taking the time to rethink the customer experience.” That involves, among other things, canceling existing pre-orders. “While not an easy decision to make,” the company writes, “we believe that this is the right thing to do.”

So Samsung canceled my pre-order for the Samsung Galaxy Fold…at least they gave me a $250 credit for anything on their store. That is admittantly quite generous.

I guess I should rejoin the pre-order queue. pic.twitter.com/Nv7OAIMxnN

— M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY (@thisistechtoday) September 5, 2019

TechCrunch has confirmed the news with Samsung, though the company is letting the email to customers speak for itself. The letter also notes that the company is launching a “new Galaxy Fold Premier Service” for those who opt to pick up the newly rejiggered version of the phone. After the first version of the handset ran into some…issues with reviews, Samsung no doubt wants to be the first line of defense should consumers run into any problems with the new $2,000 phone.

The company has yet to confirm a release date for the rest of the world, though it notes that the Fold will be coming to markets including the U.S. in “coming weeks,” which is on track with the earlier September timeframe.

Read Full Article

Spirable refuels with $7.4M to serve more personalized video ads in the US

London based adtech startup Spirable has closed a £6M Series A. The round was led by Smedvig Capital, with existing backers Frontline Ventures, Downing Ventures and 24 Haymarket also participating.

The startup is one of several playing in the customized video ads space — offering a platform that simplifies and scales video ad creation by enabling brands and advertisers to combine video templates with creative and data sources to automate the creation and delivery of scores of personalized marketing messages.

Spirable says its platform, which launched in 2014, is now used by more than 50 customers. Campaigns have run across 75+ countries, with more than 100M personalised videos distributed since launch.

Its most successful industries to date are CPG (consumer packaged goods), travel and telco, according to co-founders Dave and Ger O’Meara.

On the travel front, they give the example of a Deutsche Bahn ‘No Need to Fly’ campaign that used dynamic video to show a location-sensitive side by side comparison of flight costs juxtaposed with cheaper train trips to local beauty spots — which Spirable claims achieved a 397% increase in click throughs; a 849% performance increase; and 59% reduction in cost per click vs the control.

Another example they cite is a Vodafone campaign to promote two own brand smartphone models which integrates multiple data feeds (such as contextual weather and date data) with creative assets in order to dynamically spotlight different features of the devices. The personalized marketing messages were served across Facebook, YouTube and Display channels via APIs baked into the platform.

From five video templates the tech automated the creation of more than five and a half thousand “unique” videos, tweaked to be more relevant to the targeted viewers.

On that particular campaign, Spirable says Vodafone saw sales of its own-brand devices increase by 100%. While ad performance increased by up to 50%.

“We can use all the targeting available in Facebook and layer this with contextual live data like the weather, live sports scores etc. So if we know someone is in London (via geo-targeting via Facebook), we can pull the local weather for that location and tailor the video to people in that audience and also update the video when a goal is scored in a match by a team that the audience supports,” they explain. “Once set up the whole process if fully automated. When the weather, sports data etc change the videos update and change.”

As well as automating serving up personalized ads, the platform provides performance reports on the backend, and uses machine learning technology to optimize ad creative to boost engagement.

The startup notes it’s been a Facebook Marketing Partner for more than two years.

The privacy implications of such highly targeted ads are — or should be — plain.

Among the laundry list of data sources that Spirable’s platform lets advertisers plug in to automate “personalized” ads are “CRM data” which it says includes personal data, purchase data, website browsing, service usage data and preferences; “social audience data”, including behavioral data, audience persona, interests, preferences and intents; and “contextual” signals such as store locations, weather (including pollen and UV levels), markets and stock levels live spots, trending events, pricing, time & date, live travel data, Google traffic data and supermarket wi-fi data.

So, for example, a parent who recently logged into a supermarket’s wi-fi network to check their Facebook account and was tracked lingering near shelves of diapers might find themselves being served video ads for a discount on girlie pink baby products at a nearby store.

The sheer volume of data integrations Spirable offers is one of the areas it claims sets its platform apart from competitors — name-checking Clinch and Idomoo as its main rivals in personalized video ads.

“Spirable has an unparalleled amount of data integrations to uniquely personalise video ads in real-time,” it says, further claiming Idomoo “doesn’t talk about live data and pre-render ads and upload to Facebook — so there is a lack of data-driven pipelines”.

Other areas where it reckons its approach stands out vs the competition is because it’s offering a ‘self-serve’ platform — meaning advertisers and brands can use it to “create, scale and optimise personalised video in-house”, without the need for specialist teams or agencies trained in video effects software (such as After Effects) to make use of the platform.

The video ad building process is also “modular” and “100% customisable” — vs the two named rivals not supporting layer level manipulation, meaning it’s less easy for their users to make changes on the fly to optimize ads.

Another claimed differentiator is that Spirable’s platform is cross-channel — with support for “all major social, email, messenger and display channels”.

It says the Series A funding will go on expanding the business in the US, with a plan to ramp up spending there on sales, customer support and marketing. Product development will also get investment.

“We have an exciting product roadmap of new features that will enable us to reach our vision of making video ads as engaging and useful as any other content a person sees on digital. This requires investment to scale up our engineering and product teams,” the co-founders tell TechCrunch.

Commenting on the funding in a statement, Joe Knowles, principal at Smedvig Capital, added: “Spirable is a critical enabler of personalised video advertising, one of the major trends in video advertising today. Every marketer wants to use video in a more personalised way. But so far, slow and expensive content creation has been a barrier to mass adoption. Spirable’s Software as a Service removes this barrier and makes real time, automated video personalisation at scale a reality.

“Having tracked the business for over a year, we are excited to work with Ger, Dave and the high-quality team they are building at Spirable.”

Read Full Article

YouTube launches a dedicated Fashion vertical

YouTube today is launching a new vertical called YouTube Fashion that aims to capitalize on the popular style and beauty content that attracts millions of viewers to its platform. According to Statista, beauty videos last year alone generated more than 169 billion views on YouTube, and more recently, some of fashion’s biggest names have set their sights on YouTube. Today, YouTube says the number of Fashion & Beauty channels on the site have grown over 6 times from 2014 to 2018, and combined, generated billions of views in 2018.

The new vertical, YouTube.com/Fashion, will attempt to better organize some of this content, including style videos from top creators, industry collabs, live streams from the runway, inside looks into the fashion industry, behind-the-scenes video, vlogs from fashion icons, and more.

Among the names and brands YouTube mentioned as prominent examples of what you’ll find on the new, top-level destination, there’s:

• Fashion & beauty creators Camila Coelho, Jenn Im, Ingrid Nilsen, Safiya Nygaard, Jackie Aina, and Huda Beauty
• Collabs between fashion brands with creators like Emma Chamberlain, Dolan Twins, Wengie, the Merrell Twins, Dulceida, Juanpa Zurita, Violet Chachki, and Gigi Gorgeous
• Brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior,  Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Alexander Wang, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Gucci, and Alexa Chung
• Publications like LOVE Magazine and British Vogue
• Breakout channel ‘Being Naomi’ (Naomi Campbell’s new channel)

The launch comes at a time when Instagram has so well established its platform as a destination for style and fashion that it’s now entered into the e-commerce market as well, enabling brands to sell directly to Instagram users who can shop and check out through the social app itself. And with its IGTV platform for long-form videos, it’s working to become more of a YouTube rival.

YouTube, meanwhile, is better known for establishing beauty stars like Yuya, Bethany Mota, Michelle Phan,  Zoe Sugg, James Charles, Tati Westbrook, Jaclyn Hill, and others, who have gained traction for their makeup reviews and tutorials — and sometimes, their feuds. It has even launched a new ad unit targeting the beauty category, that uses AR to let viewers try on makeup themselves.

The company knows the potential in fashion, however — even if it’s been accused in the past of not paying enough attention to the category, despite having fashion-focused creators with millions of subscribers and hundreds of millions of video views.

Things are now starting to change on this front. Last June, YouTube hired Derek Blasberg, previously the host of CNN Style and a Vanity Fair contributor, as its new head of fashion and beauty partnerships. At YouTube, Blasberg has fostered collaborations between top creators and brands in order to better elevate the profiles of the brands and the YouTube stars.

With the launch of /Fashion, YouTube now plans to bring more international voices to the new destination and localize the page for global markets, Blasberg says, writing on the YouTube blog.

Dedicating a vertical to a particular type of content is nothing new for YouTube. As YouTube moved away from running a standalone Twitch competitor, for example, it launched a /Gaming destination on YouTube.com. It’s now one of the fastest-growing verticals on the site.

YouTube Fashion can be found on the YouTube homepage and in the mobile app, where you can subscribe to the category itself, instead of just individual creators.

It’s now one of only a few categories to get top billing on YouTube — a list that also includes Movies & Shows, Gaming, and Live.

 

 

Read Full Article

What to expect from Apple’s September 10 iPhone event

Here’s what we know for sure: Apple’s holding a big event on its campus at 10AM PT on September 10.

Here’s what we almost certainly know for sure: The iPhone 11 will launch with a new camera configuration. There will be probably be three different models.

From there, things get a bit more complicated.

There’s some speculation around whether the company will continue to offer the budget-minded iPhone R as an alternative to the flagship devices. Some rumors thus far have suggested that this year’s models will present a kind of paradigm shift for the line. Rather than introducing an iPhone 11R, the cheaper model could become the base level iPhone 11, with two pricier models taking up the Pro moniker, with a Pro and Pro Max model distinguishing the different screen sizes.

The shift would make some sense from the standpoint of the broader smartphone market. Pricing is one of the key reasons smartphone adoption has slowed considerably. Premium devices like the iPhone and Samsung’s S series routinely top $1,000. If Apple can reposition the price point, that could go a ways toward justifying a faster upgrade cycle.

One of the key distinguishing factors between the iPhone 11 and the Pro models is likely to be the camera. The base model will retain the XS’s two-camera setup, while the Pros will move to a three-camera array in a square configuration. The third lens will bring an additional wide angle to the device, similar to a number of Android handsets.

Using on-board AI and software, the cameras are said to create a composite image that can correct certain shooting errors, offer higher-resolution shots and get better images in low light. The video software on the Pro models is said to be significantly improved, as well, letting users correct color balances and apply effects on-device. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is said to have a wider field of view, which should help face unlock work from more angles, including while lying down on a table — one of the biggest complaints with the current Face ID configuration.

The device build is largely expected to stay the same, including the top notch, which has remained unchanged since the introduction of the iPhone X. Some have suggested that the invitation hints at additional colors for the handset, which would be in keeping with other entry-level devices, like the iPhone R. The Lightning port, for better and worse, is expected to remain, in spite of the addition of USB-C on the iPad Pro.

Jeff Williams, chief operating officer of Apple Inc., speaks during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018. Apple will kick off a blitz of new products this week, ending a year of minor updates and setting the technology giant up for a potentially strong holiday quarter. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A couple of rumors have been floating around hinting at the arrival of a new Apple Watch. The Series 4 device is reportedly getting a new (likely very pricey) Titanium version. The line is also set to finally add some solid sleep tracking into the mix.

The event may well see some new MacBooks, the first to include new switch mechanisms for the keyboard. That will hopefully alleviate longstanding complaints against several generations of keyboard switches.

Expect some firm dates on the software and content front, as well, including availability for the public launch of MacOS Catalina, iPadOS and iOS 13. There’s a pretty good chance that the company will also firm up launch dates for long-awaited content plays like Apple TV+ and Arcade.

All (or some) of this and more (or less) will be revealed on Tuesday September 10. TechCrunch will, as always, be on hand, bringing it to you live.

Read Full Article

Apple could add in-screen fingerprint reader to 2020 iPhone

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple has been working on in-screen fingerprint readers. But that feature won’t be ready for the new iPhone that will be announced next week. It could be released in 2020, or maybe 2021 if Apple’s suppliers can’t meet deadlines.

If you’ve played with the most recent smartphones from Samsung, Huawei and other Android manufacturers, you know that in-screen fingerprint readers already work quite well. When you unlock your phone, you can see a fingerprint icon on the screen. It then works just like any fingerprint reader — you put your finger on the icon and it unlocks your phone.

In 2017, Apple introduced Face ID for the iPhone X as a replacement to Touch ID, its fingerprint technology. But it sounds like the company now wants to give users multiple options by re-adding Touch ID to its smartphones.

All 2018 iPhone models as well as the most recent iPad Pro models now all work with Face ID. But you can still buy some Touch ID devices, such as the iPad Air or the MacBook Pro. The fingerprint readers are integrated in a separate button.

Bloomberg also confirms a Nikkei report about a future iPhone SE. Apple could launch a new low-cost iPhone SE.

Despite the name, it would be based on the iPhone 8 design instead of the previous iPhone SE design. It would feature the same 4.7-inch display that you can find on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8.

Read Full Article

Inside the bizarre world of internet trolls and propagandists | Andrew Marantz

Inside the bizarre world of internet trolls and propagandists | Andrew Marantz

Journalist Andrew Marantz spent three years embedded in the world of internet trolls and social media propagandists, seeking out the people who are propelling fringe talking points into the heart of conversation online and trying to understand how they're making their ideas spread. Go down the rabbit hole of online propaganda and misinformation -- and learn we can start to make the internet less toxic.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

TCL adopts Tempow’s multi-device bluetooth streaming tech

Here’s an interesting bit of news out of IFA today. TCL this morning announced a deal with Tempow that will bring the French company’s clever bluetooth streaming protocol to its forthcoming Plex flagship device.

TCL follows Motorola in adopting the Tempow Audio Profile (TAP) technology. The protocol, which Tempow showed off a few IFAs back, is software-based, allowing devices to stream to multiple bluetooth headphones and speakers simultaneously.

The company has clearly gained notice, tasing a $4 million funding round back in March of 2018. As Romain noted in his write up of that news, more than five million devices using Tempow’s stack, with the Moto X4 leading the way.

TCL and Tempow are making no bones about who they’re going after with this one. A press release touting the news mentions Apple several times, clearly targeting the chips that form the connections between its handsets and headphones/speakers. (Surely the news arriving a week before the new iPhones is a key part of that positioning.)

“There is a significant movement across mobile manufacturers to innovate and unlock the true potential of Bluetooth – the most recent example being Apple’s rumored Audio Sharing in iOS13.” said Tempow CEO Vincent Nallatamby said in a release. “What TCL built with Tempow far outstrips Apple’s sharing features, which are limited to two devices and only AirPods or Beats products.”

The Plex looks to be a solidly built mid-tier  6.53-inch handset, set for launch in parts of Europe and Australia. Meantime, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Tempow’s tech hit an even wider adoption among Android handset makers in the coming year.

Read Full Article

Google Assistant, navigation and apps coming to GM vehicles starting in 2021

GM is turning to Google to provide in-vehicle voice, navigation and other apps in its Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicles starting in 2021.

GM began shipping vehicles with Google Android Automotive OS in 2017, starting with the Cadillac CTS and expanding to other brands. Android Automotive OS shouldn’t be confused with Android Auto, which is a secondary interface that lies on top of an operating system. Android Automotive OS is modeled after its open-source mobile operating system that runs on Linux. But instead of running smartphones and tablets, Google modified it so it could be used in cars.

Now, GM is taking the additional step of embedding the Google services that so many people already use through their phones and smart speakers. GM was convinced by its own customer research to bring Google into its cars, Santiago Chamorro, GM’s vice president for global connected customer experience, told TechCrunch.

Google voice, navigation and apps found in the Google Play Store will be in compatible GM brands starting in 2021. Broad deployment across all GM brands is expected to occur in the years following.

Future GM infotainments, powered by Android, will have a built-in Google Assistant that drivers can use to make calls, text, play a radio station, change the climate in the car or close the garage door, if they have rhe requisite connected smart home device. The Google Assistant integration will continue to evolve over time, so that drivers in the future will be able to simply use their voice to engage with their vehicle, which could include renewing their
OnStar or Connected Services plans, checking on their tire pressure, scheduling service, according to GM and Google.

Google Maps will also be embedded in the vehicle to help drivers navigate with real-time traffic information, automatic re-routing and lane guidance. Google Assistant is tied into maps, allowing drivers to use voice to
navigate home, share their ETA or find the nearest gas station and EV charging stations.

The infotainment system will include in-vehicle apps from the Google Pay store.

GM isn’t ditching all of its own features for Google, Chamorro said, adding that the automaker will continue to offer its own infotainment features such as service recommendations, vehicle health status, in-vehicle commerce and more, with the Google applications and services complementing our offerings.

In May, Google announced that it was opening its Android  Automotive operating system up to third-party developers to bring music and other entertainment apps into vehicle infotainment systems. Media app developers are now able to create new entertainment experiences for Android Automotive OS.

Google has been pushing its way into the automotive world, first through Android Auto and then with its operating system, for several years now.

In 2017, Volvo announced plans to incorporate a version of its Android  operating system into its car infotainment systems. A year later, the company said it would embed voice-controlled Google Assistant, Google  Play Store, Google Maps and other Google services into its next-generation Sensus infotainment system.

Polestar  2, an all-electric vehicle developed by Volvo’s standalone electric performance brand, also has the Android OS. Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance anf Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have also announced plans for Android Automotive OS.

“Cars are quickly transforming and opening up a lot of opportunity,” Patrick Brady, vice president of engineering at Google, said in a recent interview. “Its the beautiful thing about having a platform like this. There are services that we might not be thinking about today and that be here tomorrow.”

Read Full Article

Facebook Dating launches in the U.S., adds Instagram integration

Are Americans ready to trust Facebook with their dating life? Barely more than a month has passed since the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook a record $5 billion over its privacy lapses, and imposed a modified corporate structure to hold the company more accountable for its decisions over user privacy. In the wake of this historic action, Facebook’s brand-new dating product is today launching to all in the U.S., promising to leverage the company’s deep insight into people’s personal data to deliver better matches than rival dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Match and others.

With its U.S. arrival, Facebook Dating will now also allow users to integrate their Instagram posts in their dating profile and add their Instagram followers to their “Secret Crush” list, in addition to Facebook friends.

By year-end, Facebook Dating users will be able to select which Facebook or Instagram Stories they want to add to their dating profile.

Trusting Facebook to find your match

Though the U.S. is the 20th market for Facebook Dating, it’s one of the most important for the product, which was first announced at the company’s F8 developer conference last year.

The new service represents a significant step toward making Facebook a tool for connecting with people who aren’t just friends or family.

This is an area where the company is now heavily invested. The Facebook Groups product, used by a billion people on a monthly basis, connects users by similar interests or by geographic location, as with its neighborhood groups. The company also launched Facebook at Work a few years ago to allow businesses to build their own networks on top of Facebook infrastructure.

Arguably, none of these efforts require as much trust as opening up your Facebook data — to a company known for its mishandling — in the hopes of finding love.

Facebook, well aware of the potential privacy pitfalls in such a product, has taken a number of steps to lock down the Facebook Dating experience so you’re not unwittingly outed to family or friends, or to work colleagues and other professional acquaintances. (Or, you know, to your spouse or significant other.)

For starters, the people you’re shown on Facebook Dating will not include your Facebook Friends. You can also opt to have Facebook Dating only show you those people where you don’t have any friends in common, for another layer of protection. And you can pre-emptively block people from seeing your profile on Facebook Dating — which may work well as a way to ensure an ex’s profile never, ever comes up and to make sure they never see yours.

And of course, Dating is an opt-in experience.

Your profile will never be visible to friends anywhere or to any people not on Facebook Dating, and it won’t appear in the News Feed. With the newly added Instagram integration, only your photos will be shown — not your Instagram handle.

However, there is still a way to add a Facebook friend as a “Secret Crush,” which will only be revealed if the interest is mutual. People are also limited to nine “crushes,” to prevent abuse of the feature. This now extends to Instagram followers, too, with the U.S. launch.

The product, which lives within the main Facebook app, also allows you to connect with people attending the same events or who participate in the same groups — though this is off by default and can be enabled on a one-by-one basis.

Beyond that, however, Facebook Dating will present you with a set of profiles based on other factors — mutual friends (if enabled), mutual groups (if enabled), mutual schools and other, unknown factors.

This is where things get tricky.

Facebook, of course, has been known to be eerily accurate with its friend recommendations — so much so that some people believed it had to have been spying on them. (As it turned out, Facebook did know more about who you were connecting with than people had realized.)

In terms of Facebook Dating’s recommendations, it’s unclear what “other” data, specifically, Facebook will be using.

Officially, Facebook says that match suggestions are based on “your preferences, interests, and other things you do on Facebook.”

Asked how exactly Facebook will rank its profile suggestions, Nathan Sharp, the Product Lead for Facebook Dating, said he can’t discuss the details of the system.

“What I can say is that, in terms of privacy, none of the people you would see or encounter would be divulging any sort of information,” he explains. “So, if you and Taylor, for example, had gone to the same college, but you’d never posted that on your dating profile, you may be up-ranked. But Taylor would never see what college you went to and you would never see what college Taylor went to,” says Sharp. 

Sharp notes that people may discover their mutualities — like sharing the same alma mater, for instance — naturally, through conversations had within Facebook Dating chat.

Though it’s not unusual for a dating app maker to be tight-lipped about its secret sauce, the amount of data Facebook has to play with here is a competitive advantage and possibly a cause for concern as users are in control of what profile data Facebook is using behind-the-scenes.

On Tinder, you may write that you “love hiking,” but Facebook would know if you actually participated in hiking-related groups or events, and how often. It may know a lot more, too — like your check-ins to hiking trails, if there are mountains in your photos, if you posted updates with the keyword “hiking,” if you “Liked” Facebook Pages about hiking, etc. But Facebook won’t confirm if this sort of data is used or how.

If people can look past the uncertainty around Facebook’s use of their personal data — and that’s a huge unknown for the U.S. market — the product itself has several advantages.

Facebook Dating’s larger goal is to make matchmaking feel personal again. It aims to remind people there’s a real person behind these profiles. That dating is not meant to be a game. This could be a big differentiator from a market tired of but still committed to using dating apps.

The issue is that today’s dating apps aren’t incentivized to help people make long-lasting connections — after all, people who find a relationship abandon their dating service. That’s bad for the apps’ bottom line. What better, then, but to double down on the “single lifestyle,” as Tinder is now doing, to ensure users stick around?

Facebook, on the other hand, isn’t exactly worried about user churn. With the social network’s 2.4 billion monthly users, it has the bandwidth to make dating an additive feature. Its sheer numbers also mean the potential for a far larger pool of daters, including those who wouldn’t otherwise think to join a dating app.

Another advantage is that Facebook is a company that knows how to build a compelling user experience. It shines in the details on Facebook Dating — like how easily it flows you into a gender identification screen at setup, or how it gives you a way to quickly share your live location for first-date safety with a trusted friend on Messenger.

It’s cracking down on the sending of unsolicited photos and porn-bot spam that plague dating apps, by limiting chats to text and GIFs only. That means no links, photos, payments or videos can be shared in messages.

And when Story integration goes live by year-end, checking out daters’ less-polished updates may become a new favorite activity.

Finally, because its raison d’être is not (for now at least) direct monetization of core dating features — like messaging or returning to a profile you accidentally swiped past — Facebook can create a free product where you’re not limited by the app’s need to squeeze you for dollars.

That said, the product can’t help but borrow from Tinder, with its set of rounded like/dislike buttons (why is there never a maybe?), photo-centric profiles that reward the genetically blessed, the integrated private chat and now Instagram integration, too.

In addition to the U.S., Facebook Dating is live already in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay and Vietnam. It will be in Europe by early 2020. 

The company won’t say how many users are on the Dating product so far, but claims it’s “doing well.”

Facebook Dating is rolling out to users 18 and over in the U.S. starting today.

Read Full Article

Sonos took the mic out of its smart speaker for the $179 Sonos One SL

Sonos has a new entry-level connected speaker that will give you all of its multi-room, high-quality sound – without the onboard microphones and smart assistants of the Sonos One. The microphone-free Sonos One SL retails for $179.99 ($20 less than the existing Sonos One) and comes with AirPlay 2, delivering good functional upgrades over the Play:1 it replaces.

Visually, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the Sonos One from the Sonos One SL, especially at a distance. It has the exact same dimensions, and the same industrial design, featuring a matte black or white finish and controls on the top. Those controls are the one place you’ll notice an obvious difference, however – the Sonos One has an additional LED, microphone icon and capacitive touch surface above the playback controls for turning on and off the built-in smart assistant and microphone. The Sonos One SL, lacking a mic, has none of these.

Unlike the Play:1, Sonos One SL can stereo pair with a Sonos One, which is a nice feature because when using two of these in tandem in one room you actually only need one to have one with a mic for use with Alexa or Google Assistant. Two Sonos One SL speakers will also pair with one another, of course, and with combined savings of $40 vs. the Sonos One, these are naturally great candidates for use with the Sonos Beam for a home theater surround setup.

[gallery ids="1877509,1877510"]

Of course, you can also still use the Sonos One SL in combination with a smart assistant – just like you can with any other Sonos speaker, so you can specify to play music to them via voice control using any other Alexa or Google Assistant enabled device.

The $179 Sonos One SL is now the least expensive offering in Sonos’ own lineup – but the $149 Sonos x Ikea bookshelf speaker is the lowest-price Sonos-compatible offering overall. They’re a lot closer than you might think in terms of quality and other factors that would contribute to a buying decision, but the Sonos One probably has a slight edge in sound, where the Ikea bookshelf speaker is a bit more versatile in terms of mounting and installation options.

Sonos One SL is up for pre-order now, and will be shipping as of September 12.

Read Full Article

The new Sonos Port connects your existing stereo setup to Sonos and AirPlay 2

Sonos has a new addition to its ecosystem for connecting in your existing stereo and AV equipment, and for adding sound out and AirPlay 2 capabilities to existing speaker setups connected via an amplifier. It’s the $399 Sonos Port, and it replaces one of the older existing devices in the Sonos lineup, the Sonos Connect, with updated specs and a smaller footprint.

The Sonos Port is a small, matte black box, which has RCA and digital coaxial audio outputs for connecting to your existing home stereo or home theatre sound system, and an RCA audio in port for connecting audio sources, including things like a turntable, projector or other AV device that may not connect so easily to something like the Sonos Beam.

Sonos Port has a built-in digitial-to-analog converter (DAC), which makes it much more attractive as an option to sound quality buffs who want to add some connected and internet-capable media playback to their existing setup. Plus, if you connect it to your amplifier, any speakers you have connected to that automatically become AirPlay 2-compatible – and it’s works with Sonos’ existing Alexa and Google Assistant integration, meaning you can use voice commands to control playback (provided you also have a Sonos or Alexa device with a mic).

The Sonos Port includes two built-in 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports, so you can wire right into your router if you need a more reliable connection, and it has a 12V power trigger, which means it’ll automatically turn on stereo or receiver equipment when they’re connected and in standby mode.

A lot of the Port’s specs are similar to the outgoing Connect’s, but the more compact package, and its new matte black look seem much better in terms of integrated unobtrusively with your existing setup. The asking price may seem a bit steep for what is essentially a connectivity accessory, but the Sonos Connect basically replaces a DAC entirely, which can be quite expensive on its own, and uniquely provides Sonos connectivity and streaming capabilities as well.

Pre-orders for the Sonos Port begin today, and it’ll be available starting September 12 in the U.S., with a global rollout to follow early next year.

Read Full Article

Sonos took the mic out of its smart speaker for the $179 Sonos One SL

Sonos has a new entry-level connected speaker that will give you all of its multi-room, high-quality sound – without the onboard microphones and smart assistants of the Sonos One. The microphone-free Sonos One SL retails for $179.99 ($20 less than the existing Sonos One) and comes with AirPlay 2, delivering good functional upgrades over the Play:1 it replaces.

Visually, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the Sonos One from the Sonos One SL, especially at a distance. It has the exact same dimensions, and the same industrial design, featuring a matte black or white finish and controls on the top. Those controls are the one place you’ll notice an obvious difference, however – the Sonos One has an additional LED, microphone icon and capacitive touch surface above the playback controls for turning on and off the built-in smart assistant and microphone. The Sonos One SL, lacking a mic, has none of these.

Unlike the Play:1, Sonos One SL can stereo pair with a Sonos One, which is a nice feature because when using two of these in tandem in one room you actually only need one to have one with a mic for use with Alexa or Google Assistant. Two Sonos One SL speakers will also pair with one another, of course, and with combined savings of $40 vs. the Sonos One, these are naturally great candidates for use with the Sonos Beam for a home theater surround setup.

[gallery ids="1877509,1877510"]

Of course, you can also still use the Sonos One SL in combination with a smart assistant – just like you can with any other Sonos speaker, so you can specify to play music to them via voice control using any other Alexa or Google Assistant enabled device.

The $179 Sonos One SL is now the least expensive offering in Sonos’ own lineup – but the $149 Sonos x Ikea bookshelf speaker is the lowest-price Sonos-compatible offering overall. They’re a lot closer than you might think in terms of quality and other factors that would contribute to a buying decision, but the Sonos One probably has a slight edge in sound, where the Ikea bookshelf speaker is a bit more versatile in terms of mounting and installation options.

Sonos One SL is up for pre-order now, and will be shipping as of September 12.

Read Full Article

The new Sonos Port connects your existing stereo setup to Sonos and AirPlay 2

Sonos has a new addition to its ecosystem for connecting in your existing stereo and AV equipment, and for adding sound out and AirPlay 2 capabilities to existing speaker setups connected via an amplifier. It’s the $399 Sonos Port, and it replaces one of the older existing devices in the Sonos lineup, the Sonos Connect, with updated specs and a smaller footprint.

The Sonos Port is a small, matte black box, which has RCA and digital coaxial audio outputs for connecting to your existing home stereo or home theatre sound system, and an RCA audio in port for connecting audio sources, including things like a turntable, projector or other AV device that may not connect so easily to something like the Sonos Beam.

Sonos Port has a built-in digitial-to-analog converter (DAC), which makes it much more attractive as an option to sound quality buffs who want to add some connected and internet-capable media playback to their existing setup. Plus, if you connect it to your amplifier, any speakers you have connected to that automatically become AirPlay 2-compatible – and it’s works with Sonos’ existing Alexa and Google Assistant integration, meaning you can use voice commands to control playback (provided you also have a Sonos or Alexa device with a mic).

The Sonos Port includes two built-in 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports, so you can wire right into your router if you need a more reliable connection, and it has a 12V power trigger, which means it’ll automatically turn on stereo or receiver equipment when they’re connected and in standby mode.

A lot of the Port’s specs are similar to the outgoing Connect’s, but the more compact package, and its new matte black look seem much better in terms of integrated unobtrusively with your existing setup. The asking price may seem a bit steep for what is essentially a connectivity accessory, but the Sonos Connect basically replaces a DAC entirely, which can be quite expensive on its own, and uniquely provides Sonos connectivity and streaming capabilities as well.

Pre-orders for the Sonos Port begin today, and it’ll be available starting September 12 in the U.S., with a global rollout to follow early next year.

Read Full Article

8-month-old startup FPL Technologies raises $4.5M to improve credit card experience in India

An eight-month-old startup in India that wants to improve the user experience of credit card holders in the nation has received the backing of at least two major investors.

Pune-based FPL Technologies said Thursday it has raised $4.5 million in its maiden financing round from Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, and others.

In an interview with TechCrunch earlier this week, Anurag Sinha, co-founder and CEO of FPL Technologies, said the startup aims to build a full stack solution to reimagine how people in India get their first credit card and engage with it.

Even as hundreds of millions of people in India today are securing loans from organized financial lenders, most of them are unable to get a credit card. Fewer than 25 million people in the country today have a credit card, according to industry estimates. And even those who have a credit card are not exactly pleased with the experience.

Anurag, Rupesh, and Vibhav, co-founders of FPL Technologies, pose for a picture

Much of the blame goes to banks and other credit card issuing firms that are largely relying on archaic technology to operate their plastic card business.

Sinha, an industry veteran, said through his startup, he aims to address a wide range of pain points of credit card holders such as in-person meeting or telephonic interaction with bank representatives for getting a credit card, or having to talk to someone to get basic support, and not being able to mask the card’s identity when shopping online.

The startup, which employs about 20 people currently, aims to build the mobile credit card service in the next couple of months, but in the meantime, it is offering an app called OneScore to help users check their credit score and learn how to improve it. Sinha said OneScore, unlike most of its rivals, doesn’t sell the data of customers to third-party agencies.

The app was launched two months ago and has already amassed over 100,000 users, Sinha said. These users would get the first dibs on the startup’s mobile credit card, he said.

In a statement, Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India, said, “When they presented a plan to modernize credit cards in India it immediately resonated with the Sequoia India team. It’s a delight to partner with them as they work on developing more flexible, affordable and easier to use financial products for Indian consumers.”

In recent months, a handful of startups in India have started to explore ways to expand the reach of credit cards in the nation and incentivize users to become more responsible with how they engage with it. Bangalore-based SlicePay offers a credit card to students in India. CRED, a startup by industry veteran Kunal Shah, recently raised $120 million to motivate users to improve their financial behavior.

Read Full Article

Google launches an open-source version of its differential privacy library

Google today released an open-source version of the differential privacy library it uses to power some of its own core products. Developers will be able to take this library and build their own tools that can work with aggregate data without revealing personally identifiable information either inside or outside their companies.

“Whether you’re a city planner, a small business owner, or a software developer, gaining useful insights from data can help make services work better and answer important questions,” writes Miguel Guevara, a product manager in the company’s Privacy and Data Protection Office. “But, without strong privacy protections, you risk losing the trust of your citizens, customers, and users. Differentially-private data analysis is a principled approach that enables organizations to learn from the majority of their data while simultaneously ensuring that those results do not allow any individual’s data to be distinguished or re-identified.”

As Google notes, the current version of the Apache-licensed C++ library focuses on features that are typically hard to build from scratch and includes many of the standard statistical functions that developers would need (think count, sum, mean, variance, etc.). The company also stresses that the the library includes an additional library for “rigorous testing” (because getting differential privacy right is hard), as well as a PostreSQL extension and a number of recipes to help developers get started.

These days, people often roll their eyes when they see ‘Google’ and ‘privacy’ in the same sentence. That’s understandable (though I think there is considerable tension inside the company about this, too). In this case, however, this is unquestionably a useful tool for developers that will allow them and the users they serve to build tools that analyze personal data without compromising the privacy of the people whose data they are working with. Typically, building those takes some considerable expertise, to the point where they may either not build them or simply not bother to to include these privacy features. With a library like this, they have no excuse not to implement differential privacy.

Read Full Article

Acer ConceptD 9 Pro: The Ultimate Laptop for Creatives

Acer’s ConceptD range targets all forms of content creators. Whether you are an artist, vlogger, professional media creator, or video editor, these laptops are for you.

The ConceptD 9 Pro is the latest addition to this range and sits comfortably at the top.

The 17.3 inch 4k UHD display uses a unique Ezel Aero Hinge, allowing a full range of movement. It also boasts 100% Adobe RBG color gamut and is Pantone validated.

Driving the show is a 9th-gen Intel Core i9 CPU, along with an Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 for the highest spec model. The trackpad doubles as a number pad and customizable media shortcut menu. A Wacom EMR digital pen is included for use with the touchscreen.

We saw the ConceptD 9 Pro at their press conference at IFA 2019, where they also unveiled pro versions of the ConceptD 7, 5, and 3.

The main draw of the ConceptD 9 Pro is its screen. The display is stunning, but the ease with which it can be moved, along with an incredibly responsive digital pen gives a great user experience. It does look a little odd at first glance, but this isn’t the first laptop to use a swinging hinge design. In use, it feels natural to move the screen between a regular laptop and tablet.

The experience of using the ConceptD 9 Pro in tablet mode is reminiscent of devices like the Wacom Cintiq, but this is a 2 in 1, and one of the best I’ve ever used.

In my short time with the ConcepD 9 Pro, I didn’t have the chance to put it through its paces, but the specs under the hood are impressive.

Many might notice the omission of a 10th gen processor. Nevertheless, the combination of 9th gen i9 (no exact model specified), an Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU with 16GB of VRAM, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM make this thing fly. People who use intensive software suites will likely find this machine more than capable of multitasking.

Like many high-performance laptops, whether aimed at creatives or gamers, this computer is large. Despite this, the ConceptD 9 Pro is surprisingly thin when folded.

Unsurprisingly, a laptop like this comes at a price. The ConceptD 9 Pro will be available in North America and Europe in November, starting at $5800. While this eye-watering price will be a barrier to some, there isn’t anything out there that quite matches all this laptop seems to offer.

Read the full article: Acer ConceptD 9 Pro: The Ultimate Laptop for Creatives

Read Full Article

Become a Salesforce-Savvy Pro With This 40-Hour Training Bundle

In recent years, Salesforce has taken over the CRM game. Over 150,000 companies use the platform, including Deloitte, Facebook, and Google. For obvious reasons, folks with Salesforce Admin knowledge are in demand. If you want to dive into this lucrative niche, the Essential Salesforce Certification Bundle can help. Through 40 hours of video tutorials, you get prepared for three top Salesforce certification exams. You can get the training now for $39.99 at MakeUseOf Deals.

Salesforce Certification

Partly why Salesforce has become so popular is that the platform allows developers to create custom apps. Anyone with these skills is bound to catch the eye of recruiters — both in tech and sales.

If you want to get ahead of the competition, this bundle provides the perfect launchpad. It includes 40 hours of content in total, taking you from Salesforce novice to certified expert.

Along the way, you will learn how to implement, configure and manage the Sales and Service Cloud. You also take a tour of the Salesforce Platform App Builder, and learn about app development with Force.com, Apex code, and the Visualforce framework.

Just as importantly, the training guides you towards three different Salesforce certifications — a great addition to any résumé.

40 Hours of Training for $39.99

This training is worth $1,500 in total, but you can get the bundle now for just $39.99 with one year of unlimited course access included.

Read the full article: Become a Salesforce-Savvy Pro With This 40-Hour Training Bundle

Read Full Article

Acer Teased a Portable LED Projector and Speaker at IFA 2019

Acer’s new LED projector lets you conveniently view media from your smartphone in any angle, anywhere. We got a first-hand look at IFA 2019, the European consumer electronics trade show happening in Berlin, Germany right now.

At first glance, the C250i looks like a stylish sound blaster. It’s got the barrel shape and features grooves that lightly wind along the device from top to bottom.

While it does function as a Bluetooth speaker, Acer’s C250i primarily is a Full HD wireless projector with 360° multi-angles and the world’s first auto-portrait projection.

Acer imagines that you’ll use the C250i to view media from your smartphone together with friends and family. They also see you using the projector to relax at home or while traveling. Whether you want to project to the ceiling to watch a movie while lying in bed or to the side of your tent to review the day’s best shots, the C250i can comfortably accommodate any projection angle. The grooves and 4-corner keystone correction make it possible.

With the auto-portrait feature, you never have to worry about the orientation of your images or videos again. Whether you project horizontal or vertical media, the projector will detect the orientation and automatically adjust.

The C250i projector offers a 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution, 100% NTSC-compatible wide color gamut, 300 ANSI lumen brightness, a 5,000:1 contrast ratio, five hours of battery life, and a total lifespan of 30,000 hours. The integrated speaker features 5 Watts TrueHarmony sound.

In addition to a Bluetooth connection, you can hook up your computer via the C250i’s standard HDMI port. Want to project directly from a USB drive? Use the USB Type-A port to plug in and project your media. You can also employ the USB Type-C port to connect your phone or PC. Best of all, none of this requires software or drivers; it’s all plug-and-play for both iOS and Android devices.

Last but not least, should your phone run out of battery, you can use the C250i as a power bank and charge your phone.

Unfortunately, the demo available after the press conference wasn’t set up to project anything. The only thing we can confirm at this point is that it’s stylish and reasonably lightweight and portable.

What’s more, you won’t be able to purchase this gem for the holidays this year. It’s not going to be available until January 2020 for USD 489 in the US and EUR 539 in Europe.

Read the full article: Acer Teased a Portable LED Projector and Speaker at IFA 2019

Read Full Article

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold arrives in Korea September 6, US in ‘coming weeks’

Five months after its planned launch, the Samsung Galaxy Fold is finally here. Well, almost. After offering a broad September time frame a few months back, the electronics giant just announced that the foldable foldable phone will be arriving in its native South Korea on September 6. Customers in the U.S. will have to wait a bit longer, with device arriving in “coming weeks.” Ditto for France, Germany, Singapore and the U.K.

The handset will be available in both black and silver options, along with a 5G version of the handset in “select countries,” marking the third Samsung device to offer up the next gen wireless technology.

If you follow the mobile space at all, you’re no doubt familiar with the saga. The company was targeting a spring timeframe for the launch of what is ostensibly the first consumer folding phone. The future, however, didn’t arrive as quickly as Samsung was hoping. Multiple review devices returned to the company broken. After initially blaming reviewers for the problems, the company ultimately accepted responsibility and went back to the drawing board for the 7.3 inch device.

“During the past several months, Samsung has been refining the Galaxy Fold to ensure it delivers the best possible experience,” the company explains. “Not only we improved the Galaxy Fold’s design and construction, but also took the time to rethink the entire consumer journey.”

The company’s clearly spinning this as an “opportunity,” and certainly it dodged a bullet by addressing these problems before releasing the product to consumers. Samsung has already discussed the fixes in previous announcements. The screen protector has been extended to under the bezels, so consumers don’t break the display by mistaking it for a removable laminate. Also, the gaps in the folding mechanism have been tightened, so particles can’t fall behind the screen.

The foldable starts at $2,000 and can currently be preordered through Samsung’s site.

Read Full Article